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COVID-19 as a Collective Trauma in Global Politics: Disruption, Destruction...
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COVID-19 as a Collective Trauma in Global Politics: Disruption, Destruction and Resilience

A special issue of Societies (ISSN 2075-4698).

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (15 February 2023) | Viewed by 15764

Special Issue Editors

Dr. Dovile Budryte

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Political Science, Georgia Gwinnett College, Lawrenceville, GA 30043, USA
Interests: memory politics; gender studies; Central Eastern Europe; trauma in global politics
Dr. Erica Resende

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Brazilian War College, Rio de Janeiro 22291-090, Brazil
Interests: critical security studies; US foreign policy; international relations theory

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Collective traumatic experiences, such as war and genocide, affect the ways in which states and non-state actors construct biographical narratives about themselves and engage in meaningful relations with other actors in international politics. They become the backbones of stories about mass suffering and resistance, thus providing a sense of collective identity. At the same time, these traumatic events are mostly ruptures in national meaning-making, capable of shattering routines and expectations for nationally bounded communities.  COVID-19, however, has claimed millions of lives and caused mass suffering globally.  If, undoubtedly, the pandemic has been both destructive and disruptive for billions of people, was it qualitatively different from other national collective traumas, such as war or genocide? Was the pandemic capable of creating a true, global collective trauma? Drawing on the growing body of literature on trauma and memory in International Relations, this Special Issue sets out to explore COVID-19 as a global trauma in international politics. It promises to focus on various dimensions of this global traumatic experience: political (How does this traumatic experience correlate with previous traumas? How have communities responded to its global, traumatic effect?); cultural (How has COVID-19 generated new discourses? How are new collective remembrance practices created?); socio-economic (How have developments in international economics associated with COVID-19 affected the collective experiences of trauma?); emotional (How have feelings of uncertainty, fear and anguish affected political behavior in dealing with the pandemic?); intersectionality (How has COVID-19, as a trauma, affected the Global South, minorities, women, people of color, and indigenous people differently?).   

Contributions have to follow one of the three categories of papers (article, conceptual paper or review) for the journal and address the topic of the special issue.

Dr. Dovile Budryte
Dr. Erica Resende
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as conceptual papers are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a double-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Societies is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • collective trauma
  • collective memory
  • global politics
  • commemoration
  • remembrance
  • injustice
  • COVID-19

Published Papers (6 papers)

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Editorial

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3 pages, 184 KiB  
Editorial
COVID-19 as a Collective Trauma in Global Politics: Disruption, Destruction and Resilience
by Dovilė Budrytė and Erica Resende
Societies 2023, 13(5), 106; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/soc13050106 - 24 Apr 2023
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 1595
Abstract
There is expanding awareness in the IR (International Relations) literature that collective trauma is a common denominator in major events in global politics [...] Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue COVID-19 as a Collective Trauma in Global Politics: Disruption, Destruction and Resilience)

Research

Jump to: Editorial, Other

13 pages, 298 KiB  
Article
Two Years of the COVID-19 Crisis: Anxiety, Creativity and the Everyday
by Raffaela Puggioni
Societies 2023, 13(2), 24; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/soc13020024 - 25 Jan 2023
Cited by 5 | Viewed by 1503 | Correction
Abstract
Doubtless, the COVID-19 pandemic has been extremely challenging in all aspects. However, rather than looking at COVID-19 exclusively as a catastrophic event, which has generated insecurity, anxiety, panic and helplessness, I suggest investigating this insecurity and anxiety through the prism of existential philosophy. [...] Read more.
Doubtless, the COVID-19 pandemic has been extremely challenging in all aspects. However, rather than looking at COVID-19 exclusively as a catastrophic event, which has generated insecurity, anxiety, panic and helplessness, I suggest investigating this insecurity and anxiety through the prism of existential philosophy. Drawing, in particular, on the work of Søren Kierkegaard and the literature on the existentialist anxiety of international relations, this study suggested looking at anxiety not in terms of insecurity but as “freedom’s actuality”. In other words, the attention was focused not so much on the many restrictions and bans imposed during the COVID-19 pandemic, but on the many quotidian and minuscule creative interventions through which people attempted to counterbalance, respond and react to them by creating new possibilities of freedom. Special attention was devoted to the distinction between normal and neurotic anxiety. This distinction is especially important, as it connects to two different and opposing subjectivities. While normal anxiety encourages a proactive approach to life—inspiring individuals to change the present through new daily strategies—neurotic anxiety prevents it, as it tends to replicate the ordinary, the known and the familiar. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue COVID-19 as a Collective Trauma in Global Politics: Disruption, Destruction and Resilience)
24 pages, 4225 KiB  
Article
#NotDying4Wallstreet: A Discourse Analysis on Health vs. Economy during COVID-19
by Merve Genç
Societies 2023, 13(2), 22; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/soc13020022 - 20 Jan 2023
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 1594
Abstract
This paper combines political/poststructuralist discourse theory with actor–network theory to explore dystopian visions in the context of a discourse around the hashtag #NotDying4Wallstreet. The call for protest against former US president Donald Trump’s demand to reopen the economy during lockdown dominates the discourse. [...] Read more.
This paper combines political/poststructuralist discourse theory with actor–network theory to explore dystopian visions in the context of a discourse around the hashtag #NotDying4Wallstreet. The call for protest against former US president Donald Trump’s demand to reopen the economy during lockdown dominates the discourse. The tweets were analyzed with quantitative discourse analysis and network analysis to identify key terms and meaning clusters leading to two main conclusions. The first (A) is an imaginary dystopic future with an accelerated neoliberal order. Human lives, especially elderly people, are sacrificed for a well-functioning economy in this threat scenario. The second (B) includes the motive of protest and the potential of the people’s demands to unite and rally against this threat. Due to the revelation of populist features, this (online) social movement seems to be populist without a leader figure. The empirical study is used to propose a research approach toward a mixed-methods design based on a methodological discussion and the enhancement of PDT with ANT. Thus, the article has a double aim: an update of contemporary approaches to social media analysis in discourse studies and its empirical demonstration with a study. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue COVID-19 as a Collective Trauma in Global Politics: Disruption, Destruction and Resilience)
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15 pages, 302 KiB  
Article
The Necropolice Economy: Mapping Biopolitical Priorities and Human Expendability in the Time of COVID-19
by Mark Howard
Societies 2022, 12(1), 2; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/soc12010002 - 22 Dec 2021
Cited by 7 | Viewed by 3724
Abstract
Necropolitics centers on the dark side of biopolitics, but if we are to take seriously Jacques Ranciere’s reassignment of ‘politics’ and ‘police,’ then what is revealed by necropolitical analysis is not simply the capacity to ‘make and let die’, but also the policing [...] Read more.
Necropolitics centers on the dark side of biopolitics, but if we are to take seriously Jacques Ranciere’s reassignment of ‘politics’ and ‘police,’ then what is revealed by necropolitical analysis is not simply the capacity to ‘make and let die’, but also the policing of a contingent order sustained by necropolitics. I describe this process as the necropolice-economy, and in this paper demonstrate its contours with reference to the COVID-19 pandemic which, I argue, has revealed the expendability of particular populations under conditions of risk and uncertainty. My analysis proceeds in three parts. First, I present the thesis of necropolice economy, arguing that the capitalist system has historically produced not simply a political economy, but a policed economy that induces a necropolitics of dispensability for unproductive or replaceable populations. Second, I develop this thesis by examining the relegation of society in relation to the economy amidst the COVID-19 pandemic. Third, I argue that the inability of states to be decisive in the pandemic reveals that the sovereign prerogative to decide on the exception is constrained by capitalist forces. This suggests that the world market is itself a sovereign force, though it is one that remains ever dependent on state violence. To conclude, I ask whether we can channel the trauma of death made visible into processes of memorialization that might catalyze revolutionary action, rather than accelerating the evolution of our necropolice economy into its next capitalist guise—I ask, provocatively, whether an emancipatory necropolitics might yet result from the contemporary moment. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue COVID-19 as a Collective Trauma in Global Politics: Disruption, Destruction and Resilience)

Other

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14 pages, 298 KiB  
Concept Paper
Populism in Times of Spectacularization of the Pandemic: How Populists in Germany and Brazil Tried to ‘Own the Virus’ but Failed
by Erica Resende and Sybille Reinke de Buitrago
Societies 2023, 13(1), 9; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/soc13010009 - 29 Dec 2022
Cited by 3 | Viewed by 2647
Abstract
Populism has been at the center of recent debates in political science and international relations scholarship. Recognized as a contested concept and framed as a new global phenomenon, populism emerged in the context of liberal democracies, where political actors inflate social antagonisms by [...] Read more.
Populism has been at the center of recent debates in political science and international relations scholarship. Recognized as a contested concept and framed as a new global phenomenon, populism emerged in the context of liberal democracies, where political actors inflate social antagonisms by putting the people against the elite. Facing a global health crisis where a sense of threat, uncertainty, and emergency has pushed normal politics into the realm of politics of crisis, populists have actively engaged in creating a spectacularization of failure—of science, institutions, experts, governments—vis-à-vis the new Coronavirus, and in creating doubts about and devaluing scientists, experts and governments. Issues such as mask mandates, lockdown measures, compulsory vaccination, medicine effectiveness, and vaccine certificates became politicized. That is, they have been taken from normal politics and made contingent and controversial in order to deepen already existing political divisions and polarization. Exploring the case of Germany and Brazil, we will show how populists tried to use the pandemic to forge divisions between the people and the elite (represented by scientists, health experts, and the press). This conceptual-empirical paper wishes to make a contribution to the debate on how populists brought scientific public health issues into their black-and-white, antagonistic vision of society and hence instrumentalized COVID-19 for their own political gain. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue COVID-19 as a Collective Trauma in Global Politics: Disruption, Destruction and Resilience)
14 pages, 262 KiB  
Concept Paper
Disembodiment and Delusion in the Time of COVID-19
by Florentina C. Andreescu
Societies 2022, 12(6), 163; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/soc12060163 - 17 Nov 2022
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 2302
Abstract
This article proposes an analytical framework that highlights embodiment’s ontological complexities and the ways in which the securitization of the body, during the COVID-19 pandemic, brought our embodied existence under the scrutiny of the invasive gaze of multiple social authorities, framing public and [...] Read more.
This article proposes an analytical framework that highlights embodiment’s ontological complexities and the ways in which the securitization of the body, during the COVID-19 pandemic, brought our embodied existence under the scrutiny of the invasive gaze of multiple social authorities, framing public and private modes of being as existential security risks. It engages with the research developed by psychiatrist Iain McGilchrist and clinical psychologist Louis A. Sass on schizophrenia, tracing the extent to which COVID-19 reshaped reality displays a dynamic akin to this mental disorder, through its abnegation of embodied presence, retreat into virtual register, and abnormal interpretations of reality. To spotlight this dynamic’s consequences, the article explores three interconnected features of schizophrenia, namely hyper-reflexivity, diminished self-presence, and disturbed grip on the world. These help to contextualize the ways in which a large segment of the population in the United States responded to the COVID-19 pandemic. To that end, the article highlights the development of a virtual universe of conspiracy theories, shaping a citizenry which, akin to schizophrenics are simultaneously cynical and gullible, manifesting a vehement distrust of aspects of life that need to be implicit, while readily embracing conspiratorial worldviews. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue COVID-19 as a Collective Trauma in Global Politics: Disruption, Destruction and Resilience)
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